Concerning the Death of Brigadier Alister Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart (Open)

(Open to all characters, far and wide. Thought i'd try a sad one this time.)

In the middle of England, somewhere near Stonehenge, lies an idle mailbox. A peculiar looking device, it often is well trimmed around, kept very neat and tidy, and always has a fresh splash of color, making it gleam bright blue in the mid-day sun. A gleaming red flag sat stationary on the side of the box, giving indication that there was either no mail to be had or something had been picked up. Either way, this box had no other distinguishing features, other than in bright white letters splashed across it's side "The Doctor, England."

During his time traveling, the Doctor had learned very quickly that some of his former companions had no true technology to contact the TARDIS with, and more often than not, had to rely on letters and post. So, sometime during his "ruffles and bowties" incarnation, he set up a automatic delivery mailbox that transported his mail from the box to the TARDIS with ease. Of course, one can't always distinguish between WHICH Doctor one wanted your mail going to, so he made sure that his pen pals knew to write a particular code in basic Gallifreian on it so they knew which one it was going to.

But on this particular today, as the postman approached the mailbox once more, he held a bundle of twelve letters, each marked "The Doctor, TARDIS," with twelve different symbols on the back, and each from the same place: "From the estate of Brigadier A. Lethbridge-Stewart."

He set the letters into the mailbox, and closed the lid. He heard the absurd and strange whirring noises coming from inside the mailbox, and he opened the lid again. The letters were gone, reaching the far ends of the universe to wherever the Doctor may lie.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the dim, Victorian paneled console room across the universe, the Doctor stood like a waxwork, looming over the simplified console in front of him. His tall collard Victorian shirt was sweat stained and dusty from a recent visit to a rock quarry. His silken necktie dangled from his neck, loose and untidy. His plaid waistcoat ripped and torn to shreds, but nothing a little sewing couldn't fix. He was glad to be home. Well, sort of at home.

The Doctor flipped switches on the console, irritated this particular one didn't provide the reassuring beeps and trills his larger, more hexagonal one did. A bag of licorice allsorts sat on top of the console, release a comforting scent of anise wafting throughout the room.

The unusual quietness of the console room was rudely interrupted by a small *PING* from his console. He twisted a knob, releasing a small hatch near the door. The hatch opened and revealed a singular letter with a crudely drawn "fourth face" on the back in circular Gallifreian. Ahh, the simplicity of human beings.

He flipped it over and saw the sender name, and felt a pang of excitement flow though his hearts. The Brigadier had written him!

((Just to clarify in Eric's timeline this takes place after Eyes Of The  Forest, so he knows at least one incarnation of The Doctor by now))

Eric sat on a stool in The Maldovarium bar sipping on a Sto Spine-Breaker, he sighed and glanced at the acid green beverage resting on the worn and chipped bar-side in front of him. "Drink's damn atrocious, well I suppose what this place lacks in drinks quality it makes up for in quietness." He thought to himself as an unnaturally pale gentleman and a Raxacoricofallapatorian or "Raxo" as Eric liked to call them for short argued with each other in increasingly loud and outraged voices from a table in the corner. He heard hushed whispering between the two people standing a little ways away from him at the bar. Dorium Maldovar had entered the bar, and apparently the rumours regarding demon's run were true; instead of his original, slightly obese body Dorium's bright blue head lay resting on a cushion inside a cybernetics Cranium Carrier.

Eric supposed he's better go say hello, so he got up from his stool; gave the bar-tender the necessary amount of credits he had asked for in that eerily calm voice that all Ood spoke in through their translator orbs. "Dorium old boy, how the hell have you been? Remember me? Oh come on now you must remember me." Eric called to Dorium as he approached him, adding a slight gruff undertone to his voice as he spoke. "Hmm...oh...oh yes..uhm..Eric, Eric was it? Eric...oh forgive me dear boy your full name appears to have escaped me." Dorium replied, tiny beads of sweat rolling down the full length of his bald head as the harsh spotlights installed in the bar shone down on it.

Eric opened his mouth for a playful retort but heard a beeping sound and looked downwards to his Vortex Manipulator, a notification played across it's service; "Ah, well I suppose I can't expect someone like the renowned Dorium Maldovar to remember every so-and-so he shares a conversation and a drink with am I right?" He said, Dorium showing no sign of having even heard Eric speaking other than a small "Hmmm.." sound. Eric looked at Dorium's eyes and then the direction they seemed to be staring at. He seemed to have become incredibly interested in the increasingly volatile situation between the Raxo and his Pale table-mate along with the massive lug of a Blathereen Dorium seemed to have employed as a bodyguard, who was at this moment looking at the Raxo and making disgusted; guttural noises coming straight from the back of his throat.

Eric summoned up a brief final smile to Dorium before heading past the massive machine his head was encased in and out of The bar and into The Maldovarium Market. He ducked under the faded and tattered awning of a shop who's sign was unreadable due to a combination of natural wear and tear and graffiti of various sizes, shapes and styles. Eric leaned up against a wall with spray paint reading "Who's afraid of The Big Bad Wolf?" before checking his Vortex Manipulator.

The screen read as follows: "Warning: Temporal Anomaly Detected" Eric swiped up on the screen and The Manipulator showed the Anomaly and it's origins in more detail, on the screen there was a list of 12 individuals who; curiously enough also seemed to be the same person. A bewildered smile crept onto Eric's face and he decided to randomise The Manipulator's destination to one of these 12 individuals locations. He surmised that a temporal anomaly of this scale and intensity would have to have time-travel involved somehow, something a little more sophisticated than his Vortex Manipulator.

Eric finished adjusting the control and temporal manipulation algorithms before he noticed a name, to anyone else in his shoes the two words on the screen he had just noticed would seem inconsequential; but Eric had encountered these two words before. As well as the man they belonged to, Eric prepared to time-jump, but even as he did so he pondered what kind of trouble the particular owner of those two words could have gotten into this time. "Ok Doctor, let's see what you've got for me this time." He said with his mischievous grin still on his face as The Manipulator flung him across space-time and bypassed the entire Time-Vortex in less than a nano-second.

The War Doctor clung to his TARDIS with all the strength in his right arm as his left pulled the trigger on his gun, showering bullets on the Daleks and a few allied Ivialtoisli as well. Swinging himself back and forth to duck bullets, it occurred to him that the odds were innumerably stacked against him at this point, but if he was able to hold on until reinforcements came...

He fired round after round until the air was clear enough, then grasped the edge of the TARDIS door, which swung open. Someone fired a laser at one of the round things. Rassilon damn 'em all, he thought, then with another explosion of bullets took out the offending Dalek's eye stalk. I like the round things.

Dashing into the TARDIS and slamming the door behind him, he sank down into a crouch and tried to catch his breath. He was getting old... too old for this. But he would keep fighting. He would keep fighting 'til every damn Dalek was out of the damn sky.

A quiet ping rang out. By Rassilon's bloody codpiece. Not mail. Not now. But wait, who would know to send something to him? He didn't have companions anymore. He didn't... unless it was sent out to all the Doctors, all at once.

The War Doctor ran to the console and picked up the letter. From the estate of Brigadier Alister Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart... Of course. This was exactly who he needed to keep going. The Brigadier.

((oh razzy just realized with your signature and mine right one after another it says "gallifrey rises no more" O.O))

The Doctor, letter still in hand, fluttered through the TARDIS corridors, grabbing a new coat from the wardrobe along the way. He pushed his way though a larger set of doors and landed in his old console room. Satisfied he found his way back, he hung his coat up on the coat rack, pulled up a chair, and ripped open the envelope.

The quiet hum of the console room permeated his mind, but it was far from comforting. As he pulled the contents out of the envelope, the familiar scent of a fine aftershave lotion and the dry must of age wafted into the Doctor's nostrils. The smell of the Brigadier. The contents of the envelope, in his hand, seemed to be a couple letters and a few photographs. The Doctor couldn't help but smile. "Oh Brigadier, you always were an old softie. No matter what Benton or that imbecile Sullivan said."

The Doctor observed the faded, yellowing photographs. It was of his first assignment, dealing with the giant robot that Kettlewell had so ignorantly created. His ear-to-ear smile as he wrapped his arms around the Brigadier, who was stoic as always. Sarah Jane, the ever beautiful Fay Wray, was heroically standing on top of the robot, humourously accepting victory over it. In the background was the familiar canary yellow roadster, which his former face loved so dearly.

He breezed over the letters, seeing that one letter in particular had the official letterhead of UNIT and "From the desk of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart". The letters staggered in date, and each had a curious numbering atop of each letter. The first letter he held was simply a small memo note, addressed generically to "Doctor (whichever one you are)"

The Memo:

Eric appeared a few yards away from a bright blue mailbox in the middle of a field in England, 'Well, this is new' he thought to himself as he spotted the mailbox and approached it (albeit tentatively). He slowly, carefully opened the lid of the mailbox, the only thing it contained was good old cO2. Eric closed the lid again, inspecting the exterior of the box he found a name and a country written in white letters across one side of the thing. It read: "The Doctor, England" This box and the writing on it was puzzling in and of itself, 'Now why does a man who can go anywhere anytime need a mailbox? Forward Address maybe?' Eric conducted a quick scan with his Vortex Manipulator on the mailbox as he contemplated the thing's reason for existing.

He stared intently at the Manipulator's screen as information came back. According to the scan's findings the mailbox possessed some form of controlled wormhole, able to teleport whatever was inserted into it to one of 12 locations, unsurprisingly these 12 locations were also the same place.
As well as the wormhole potential the box possessed, Eric also noticed a fluctuation in wormhole energies around it. "Either this thing's about to explode and a giant wormhole's about to open up here or this mailbox was recently used...VERY recently used." He muttered as another reading came up on the Manipulator: "Arton Energy Detected" It read, giving off a beeping sound as it displayed the notification. "Artron Energy....that's background stuff, Time-Vortex radiation...which means that if there's Artron Energy nearby, then there's also a time-traveller nearby." He mused to no-one in particular.

Activating a tracer trail to the source of the energy Eric suddenly noticed a Deep Blue Box standing matter-of-factly in the middle of the field a few yards away from the mailbox. "How the hell didn't I notice you before?" Eric asked of the sentient time-machine (Admittedly being completely clueless of it's sentience) 'It's like you were always there....but I didn't want to notice you until I was pointed to you...what is that..perception filter?' He continued on asking questions to a large box that couldn't speak, at least not in a language Eric would understand. Eric approached the box and thought about it for several seconds before giving in to his more impulsive nature and knocking sharply on the wooden doors.

At the date of my funeral, please make sure to collect the letters from your other incarnations and decide the verdict.

At the date of my funeral.

My funeral.

The Brigadier was dead.

Or was he? There were a staggering number of ways one could think you were dead, or even you would think you were dead, but something told the War Doctor - perhaps age, perhaps the growing cynicism slowly penetrating one of his hearts - that his friend had indeed breathed his last. The Brigadier. UNIT, in the 70s or 80s - decades were always subjective. All of it was a bygone era, something he wished he could return to. But he couldn't outrun the war...

He could stall for a little while, though.

Pushing down a lever and hearing the TARDIS's thrum, the War Doctor sighed as the sounds of battle left his ears. Now the war was lightyears away. The only shouting of EXTERMINATE he would face now were the ones inside his own mind.

He landed the dark-blue box near his mailbox and stepped out to observe the damage the battle had caused. It was riddled in bullets, the poor old girl. The War Doctor sighed and headed toward the mailbox - only to see a young man rapping on the door to another TARDIS. The Fourth's one, if he wasn't mistaken. He clenched his fingers around his arm remembering the time he and Scarfy had been forced to infiltrate the Gallifreyan Capitol in disguise to do away with the Daleks' spy network. This young man must be a companion.

No. No. Was that a Vortex Manipulator on his wrist?

"Where did you get that?" the War Doctor growled, pointing to the device. "Are you a Time Agent? What do you want?"

Confused and befuddled, the Doctor strolled over to his console and smacked the materialization lever. The TARDIS whirred and groaned, and with a solid, metallic thud, the TARDIS successfully landed. He didn't know where, but the Doctor assumed that it MUST be England. The old girl always liked England for some reason...

The Doctor slipped on his new frock and started towards the door levers. As he touched the unusually red knob, he heard a strange sound. An incredibly light *knock knock knock*. It came from just outside the large, vortex doors.

Eager to see who's out there, he ran to the wood paneled doors and yanked it open. Attached to the door was a hand, which was immediately yanked into the TARDIS, and replaced by the looming, Bohemian body of the Doctor. He looked back at the strange man in his craft, peeked outside to where he landed, and went back in to greet the man.

((Sorry for the short post but not alot I can do right now))

Eric looked over to the source of a wheezing, groaning sound he suddenly began to hear before he was yanked into the large Police Box by a decidedly odd-looking man. This man peeked out of the entrance to the box for several seconds and; seemingly satisfied with what he saw (or the relative lack thereof) he closed the door behind him and turned to Eric.

"Uhm....Hi....you don't know me, or more accurately you don't know me yet; even after all this time Time-Travel still confuses the hell out of me sometimes. In any case, My name's Eric...you're probably wondering what I'm doing here to which I answer "My Vortex Manipulator did it while I was in the middle of a drink." He began to explain before the odd-looking curly haired man could even open his mouth.

The young man had no sooner heard the War Doctor's question when he was yanked into the other TARDIS by the scarfed Doctor. The War Doctor sighed again. It seemed that his fourth incarnation was going to make things difficult.

He closed the door to his own TARDIS and walked up to the shut doors of the other one and knocked. "Doctor?" He leaned his ear against the door - they were surprisingly non-soundproof, he had learned - and listened as the young man was explaining himself to Four. "...my name's Eric...you're probably wondering what I'm doing here to which I answer 'My Vortex Manipulator did it while I was in the middle of a drink'...."

The War Doctor frowned. That still didn't explain why he had a Vortex Manipulator. But he wasn't here for this Eric bloke. He was here to honor the Brigadier's last wishes. "I received the letter, Doctor," he called. " 'Collect the letters from your other incarnations and decide the verdict,' that's what it said, right? Do you have the slightest bit more of a clue what he meant than I do?"

The Doctor looked to the man who claimed to be an "Eric" or something, then to the door of his TARDIS. Someone was again pounding on the door, demanding to speak to the Doctor. And to think he had been so careful about letting people know he was coming in....

He ran to the doors and opened them. Standing there was a gruff, older man who reeked with familiarity (and a bit of burnt metal.) "Excuse me, I know you're a fan and all, but I've got...well, what did you say about the letters?"

He still held the letters in his hand, and observed that this gruff, older man had a corresponding set of letters, scribbled and written with the same ink that his was. Did the Brigadier send off letters to more than just the Doctor? He huffed a moment, then motioned for the man to come in.

"He sent the letter to all of us incarnations, I think," the War Doctor said with a nod. "Have you confirmed the actual passing? Sure it's not a trap to bring all the Doctors together and attack?"

He strode into the other Doctor's TARDIS, suppressing a smile at seeing the same "round things" adorning the walls as he'd remembered. He glanced at Eric, frowned a little, then softened his expression. The young man had the look of a Time Agent about him. The Daleks would have exterminated in a heartbeat to take the Vortex Manipulator. Best not antagonize him. The older Doctor turned back to his younger self.

"The mailbox. Who has access to it, or rather, knowledge of it? We need to determine its security. If the Lethbridge-Stewart family all had access, then surely others could have gotten to it as well." After a moment, he added, "Or perhaps they went through UNIT..."

Eric watched as this unfamiliar Curly-Haired version of The Doctor opened the door of his TARDIS and spoke to an older gentleman who was standing outside. "Excuse me, I know you're a fan and all, but I've got...well, what did you say about the letters?" Eric heard Mr Curly (a nickname he had come up with in his mind for the distinctly bohemian-looking Doctor) say as The older man strode confidently into Mr Curly's TARDIS and say something about letters being sent to all incarnations and speculate about it being a trap of some sort. Eric felt this was as good a time as any to speak up. "So, I'm assuming from the way he's speaking, that you're both the same person, The Doctor." He said, pointing at The War Doctor.

Eric heard an alarm sound and looked down at his Vortex Manipulator as it displayed a warning about a Temporal Anomaly alarmingly close to his location. "So the Temporal Anomaly would be you two being in the same place at the same time, same person different points in his own time-stream." He added after the glance at the Manipulator's warning. For the first time Eric took a proper look around the fairly large room he found himself in. A white console stood in the center of it all and Eric, even after some of the hair-whitening stuff he'd seen, had to gasp in awe of it all.

"Nice control room by the way...very....retro...also very white, I liked the other one's better myself but there you go." He said, trying a friendly smile to The two Doctors while secretly hoping one of them didn't pull out a Sonic "Screwdriver" as The Doctor had called it and disable his Manipulator on the grounds that he had one.